News & Views

As New Narrative’s Head of Digital, part of my job involves scouring the internet to find out the latest trends and developments in digital marketing. Having read hundreds of blogs, listened to numerous podcasts and signed up for dozens of free trials, there is certainly plenty of information out there.

But for my first blog post I thought it was worth going back to the basics. My goal is to walk you through what I consider to be the core components of B2B digital marketing.

1. Strategy

i. Content Strategy

Creating content is no easy task but whatever your end goal, you need to start with a content marketing strategy. A good content strategy will set out how you intend to use various types of content, media and distribution channels so that they deliver your desired outcome.

According to the Content Marketing Institute, 63% of B2B marketers don’t have a documented content strategy. This is surprising as a documented strategy not only avoids duplication and wasted resources, but will ensure that all stakeholders are aligned on objectives, responsibilities and accountability.

Understanding that a lead generation campaign requires a different content strategy than one focused on content amplification is why you should always start by identifying your commercial goals first and work backwards. Meanwhile, a competitive content analysis, also known as a content audit, can help you discover what your competitors are talking about (too much or too little), their tone and approach, as well as how and where they’re promoting their content.

With your content strategy in place, your next step should be an editorial calendar. Calendars are extremely useful to get you thinking ahead, staying on track and mapping out topics, dates, formats and channels.

Likewise, having a digital marketing strategy will help you meet your objectives through using online marketing techniques such as SEO, content and social media.

The strategy should start with an analysis of your current capabilities (a SWOT or SOSTAC analysis is ideal), setting out your goals and KPI’s. Next, using the SMART objective technique will help ensure you have clear, defined and measurable objectives. Then you need to think about how your value proposition, audience personas and content can all work together in relation to your strategic goals.

Personally, I find the digital capability framework an excellent starting point when planning a B2B digital marketing strategy:

Once you’ve gone through and applied the framework to your organisation, you might want to repeat the exercise again on a micro-level, applying the framework to the individual components such as: social media, content and measurement.

Once you have put your strategy in place, you’ll need to know if it’s working. The only guaranteed way to measure success is to look at the numbers: good data will help you understand where you started, where you are, and where you’re heading.

For most content marketing and thought leadership campaigns, one of the primary objectives is to create ongoing engagement with your audience and have them come back when new content is published. A metric like “New vs. Returning Users” tracks if it’s a user’s first time on your website or if they’ve visited before. Alternatively, a lead generation campaign should focus on the number of leads generated and converted. This can be measured by tracking the number of contact forms completed, free trial registrations and of course revenue generated.

Below I’ve listed some metrics and what they track to get you started.

Once you have your data, then comes the fun part – the analytics. The real value of marketing analytics is uncovering what’s behind the numbers: how your content, SEO and even offline events contributed to that spike or drop in pageviews and click-through-rates. For example, are you getting an increasing number of hits from your Japan-based readers? If so, this could be an opportunity to produce more Japan focused content and grow that segment.

i. Tools

There is no shortage of tools out there. For instance, I googled “marketing analytics tools” and I got 398,000,000 search results. So, before you drown in the endless lists, reviews and free trials, here are my suggestions for some core tools that I have tried and tested, and should be your first port of call:

Web Analytics Tools: Full suite marketing analytics tools link to your website via a code, tracking metrics such as pageviews (a user visiting a page on a website), acquisition channels (where your visitors are coming from i.e. social media or organic traffic). Among the most popular tools are Google Analytics and Adobe Analytics.

Social Media Analytics Tools: If you’re using social media, such as YouTube, LinkedIn or Twitter you must always keep your eye on your engagement rates, and how different posts, content formats (video vs. text) perform. Luckily these tools are built into the platform and are generally easy to use. For the advanced user, tools such as Sprout Social, Buffer and Hootsuite can integrate all your social channels into one combined dashboard.

3. Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization or SEO for short, is the practice of optimizing your website for search platforms such as Google, Bing or Baidu to allow them to better understand your website and match it to the relevant online search queries. The goal of SEO is to generate more organic traffic to your website. Organic traffic is when a user finds your website as a result of an online search for a product or service that you offer, or a topic mentioned in your content. Among the benefits of organic traffic, is creating more awareness of your brand, your products or services. Ultimately, it can become a lead generation mechanism for potential clients.

With ever-changing algorithm updates — Google for example has 200+ ranking signals — it has become a complex and full-time job to optimise your pages and content for maximum results. However, the beauty of SEO is how it now requires a holistic approach rather than a check-list of to-dos. While there still are must-do optimization techniques, the emphasis is now on the quality of content and how useful, original and most importantly how well it satisfies the reader’s intent. The more your content fulfils the reader’s question and informational need, the more useful it is deemed by the search engine and the higher it will rank.

i. SEO Tools & Techniques

Some of the well-known techniques of SEO include a keyword strategy (keywords your target audience uses to search online), optimizing your website for speed and acquiring backlinks. A backlink, the digital equivalent of a literature citation, is when an external website links to one of your pages either as a reference or a resource. The more backlinks you acquire from a selection of high-ranking websites the more likely you’ll benefit from an SEO perspective.

There are various ways to approach keyword research, some of the most popular tools include SEMRush and Ahrefs both with large keyword databases. You can supplement your research with Google Trends or Answer The Public to find out what topics and queries are trending and how people are searching for them.

Acquiring backlinks is longer-term process, that usually centres on outreach efforts to site owners: building a rapport, introducing your content and the value it brings to their site. Other techniques include getting links from online directories and resource pages. Backlinko, a popular digital marketing website has updated their definitive link-building guide, which is packed with ideas, data-backed insights and case studies.

It’s important to remember that if your content doesn’t provide any value, you are limiting your chances of getting backlinks. So, focus on your content!

4. Social Media

With everyone (even pets!) on social media, it needs to be part of any content strategy. The most important thing to understand is that different social media channels cater to different audiences. It may seem easier to create an account on every social media platform, however it’s much more effective to do some research into which one fits with your brand and objectives.

For example, B2B businesses in the finance industry will typically focus on a professional network like LinkedIn as that is where their audience expects to engage with industry news and content. While a technology business might want to opt for visual content, targeting a channel like YouTube that can provide them the space to discuss at length their product capabilities and features.

Popular B2B Social Media Channels:

LinkedIn

Twitter

YouTube

WeChat & Weibo (China focused)

Medium

i. Social Media Strategy

Part of a successful social media strategy is understanding where your audience is, how they use the network and what you want to accomplish. Research and a social media audit can help you answer these questions. A social media strategy should be part of your content strategy.

ii. Social Media Policy

A well-defined and documented social media policy is critical for any B2B organisation, although often overlooked. The policy serves as an operational framework, governing behaviour, delegating responsibilities and outlining an escalation process in the case of social media emergencies. This database of social media policies compiled by SocialMediaGovernance.com allows you to explore how organisations in different sectors guide and govern their social media usage. Waiting for a social media crisis to happen to draw up a policy can cost you your business, just as these brands found out the hard way. Having one in place early on, will most likely minimize the risk of a crisis and if it does occur, you’ll know how to react and who to turn to for support.

iii. Social Listening & Media Monitoring

Social media listening and monitoring, is a technique employed by both B2C and B2B organisations. Tools such as BrandWatch and Mention allow you to create and track triggers for brand mentions, keywords or hashtags (or a mixture of all) on different social media channels, online forums, blogs and news sites etc. Tracking this information will make you better informed of how your audience perceives your business or service.

For B2B businesses, it can be a great resource to conduct market research on what their industry and customers are discussing, identifying perceptions, both positive and negative that can be used to inform a content marketing strategy. Although I must warn you, that you will need to spend a decent amount of time extracting these insights and the work will involve wading through spreadsheets!

5. Paid and Search Engine Marketing

Search engine marketing is an online advertising technique that allows marketers to bid on selected keywords and have their website listed in the search results, when one or more keyword is part of a search queries. The example below shows paid ads for a search for “Hong Kong apartments to rent”.

For a B2B organization, search engine marketing (SEM), is best used for brand awareness and content reach amplification.

Brand awareness is all about creating familiarity and a visual connection, triggering an association with a product, a service or even certain values. Display network campaigns are usually a good fit for this purpose, just avoid pop-ups at all cost!

To help maximise your content’s exposure and online reach, you can launch a paid search campaign that targets keywords that are relevant to your content. Alternatively, you can opt for social media marketing, using promoted tweets on Twitter and on LinkedIn, that can help you target the right audience based on geography, industry and expertise.

Wrap Up

I hope you find this guide useful. There’s a lot to consider but if you do your research, have the courage to experiment and of course use data to guide your decisions you should soon find the right mix to suit your organization’s culture and goals. Good luck!

After our fifth-year anniversary event in our hometown of Hong Kong, we thought it was about time to celebrate in another place that’s very important to us – so we rang in New Narrative’s sixth year with cocktails and canapes on the breezy rooftop of the Scarlet hotel in Singapore’s historic Chinatown district. Many thanks to the clients and friends who came out to celebrate with us, and we’ll be seeing a lot more of the Lion City in the very near future.

Whether you call it the new oil or the new gold, since the The Economist declared data the world’s most valuable resource way back in 2017, its value only seems to have risen. Like most of our peers in marketing and the media it’s certainly become more integral to what we do as an organisation. Virtually every project we take on now involves an element of data measurement and analysis. At the same time the near-perpetual excitement surrounding data and the emerging technologies it fuels, like artificial intelligence, has caused even its biggest advocates to warn we’re in a time of “data gluttony.”

What it comes down is that getting data is no generally longer a problem; extracting meaning from it is. With so many data sources and metrics at our disposal, trying to process information into something that can be acted on is often the mental equivalent of trying to drink from a firehose. In this kind of environment it’s no wonder people crave simplicity and jump at any clear conclusion they can get – which can fuel some pretty questionable decisions.

Bigger isn’t always better

As an example one recent project had us delving into the Twitter traffic on a certain topic to see who was effectively leading the conversation on it. One organisation seemed to be clearly in the forefront with almost everything they posted garnering a truly exceptional number of retweets – surely a sign they were doing something right? Until we dug a little deeper and noticed the vast majority of these retweets were from just one or two sources. Their closest competitor may have been a distant second in terms of sheer numbers, but its shares came from a far more diverse base – a much stronger indicator of credibility in our view.

In addition to the obsession with volume, data analytics (as many marketers practice it) is excessively retroactive. AI-powered predictive analytics is starting to make some impressive inroads into marketing, but in general the majority of analysis concentrates on results.

The fact is, by the time the data tells you conclusively something isn’t working, it’s too late – whereas a degree of analysis before a campaign is launched might prevent you from going down an unproductive path in the first place. Applying the right tools, there’s an incredible amount you can learn from what (and where, and how frequently) peers or competitors are publishing on a subject that can then be factored into your plans – whether on the themes that strike a chord with professional networks or what phrases risk putting you in the jargon danger zone. Our head of digital will be sharing more on those possibilities in the weeks to come.

Whatever light it sheds on audience engagement or the topics of the day, to me it’s only become clearer that data needs to be examined from a number of angles, and filtered through the lens of good old-fashioned human inquiry and cynicism. That’s why even as our practice becomes more ‘digital,’ I’d prefer to call it data informed, rather than ‘data-driven’ – no offense to our future robot overlords intended.

It’s no secret that large corporations have a tough time recruiting for internal editorial positions. And even if they get lucky and find the right candidate, retaining the newcomer for the long haul is often even more of a challenge.

In fact, some of n/n’s clients readily admit that they first approach us simply because they are unable to build an internal editorial team of their own.

Why is this the case? After all, some estimates proclaim content marketing will become a US$400+ billion industry by 2021, up from US$195 billion in 2016. If ‘content’ is now so important, and consuming ever larger chunks of marketing budgets, why is the discipline so hard to hire for?

Here’s our two cents on this issue, given what we’ve seen over the years from our perch as one of Asia’s largest specialist content agencies. Every situation is different, or course. But according to what our clients tell us, the following patterns have emerged as relatively consistent across a number of organisations.

1. RESOURCES

Content creation is hard – and takes more than one person
Editorial production is a team effort, and very time consuming. That’s why top newsrooms are staffed by numerous specialist journalists and editors. But in corporate life, the ‘content team’ is sometimes a team of one reporting into a larger marketing department — which is also responsible for many non-editorial initiatives, such as event planning and sponsorships. Problems quickly arise when business leaders make competing content demands on one content executive. For example, the Head of Greater China wants a 5,000-word overview of Belt and Road investment opportunities, while the Head of Debt Capital Markets wants an op-ed series on the evolution of risk pricing in China. Both business heads want the work finished in just two weeks.

The result? Frustration all around. The content executive throws his or her hands up and says it can’t be done – the deadlines are unrealistic. The business heads are frustrated that their requests are denied; and the marketing team wonders if they’ve wasted their money hiring the content executive in the first place.

2.TALENT

Top editorial talent is often in the newsroom — or working at an agencyOften times those who have dedicated their lives to content want to be in the centre of the action – and that means they want to work for the world’s most prestigious newsrooms, whether that’s the Financial Times or the Wall Street Journal. They dream of Pulitzer prizes, shaping WTO policies with brilliant analyses, and taking down corrupt politicians with hard-hitting investigations. The corporate life simply can’t offer the buzz of a newsroom – or even the workflow variety offered by a top agency, for that matter.

The result? Corporate hiring managers are often left with slim pickings, as they are unwilling to pay enough to attract senior editorial professionals. Those willing to take the internal corporate job often don’t have the skills or experience to shape editorial strategies and marshal sufficient resources from the ground up.

3. WORKFLOW

Lack of diversity (and controversy) in the work itselfCorporate content managers are required to think about the same entity everyday: his or her employer. The topics may change, but the end product is always the same – i.e. this is my company’s views on X and this is my company’s views on Y. Just compare that to life in a newsroom, where there is a never-ending buffet – refreshed daily — of projects on offer. On Monday you’re covering a shareholder scandal in a technology company; and on Tuesday breaking news on an industry changing M&A deal.

The result? Boredom sets in. The corporate content executive feels underutilised. S/he struggles to exercise news judgement because that judgment is always constrained by other corporate priorities and plans. Meanwhile, a range of internal actors – from business heads to compliance officers – seek control over the editorial agenda to manage legal risks and protect commercial interests, exacerbating the content executive’s feelings of powerlessness.

4. OFFICE ATMOSPHERE

Writers and other ‘content creators’ need ample amounts of alone time
Although editorial planning and production requires a team, getting down to work on a white paper or infographic or video script is often a solo affair. Door shut, phone off, and headphones on. The problem is corporate life doesn’t really support such solitude. Executives at every level are often required to join teleconferences and group meetings – and those that refuse risk being branded a stubborn outsider.

The result? The content executive grows tired of asking to be left alone; while his or her colleagues wonder what the big deal is and why they can’t join the team lunch like everyone else.

—–

So, what to do? Give up and stop searching? Not necessarily. But at n/n we think it’s best to keep the following principles in mind:

RESOURCESAllocate enough budget so the editorial leader can hire a small team for support – either internal employees or an external content agency. Explain to business leaders very clearly and without apology that quality editorial production is hard and time consuming: a tiny team simply can’t produce the volumes produced by large newsrooms.

TALENTAccept that you pay for what you get. If you want the Wall Street Journal’s former Beijing Bureau Chief, you must entice him or her away from that exciting life with substantial incentives and rewards.

WORKFLOWAllow the editorial executive to utilise his or her core competency – news judgement. That means they get to significantly influence the editorial agenda. Also, accept that they’ll likely recommend topics that are ‘controversial.’ While you can tone down these topics to suit your corporate strategy, the fact remains that asking editorial professionals to churn out corporate pablum won’t work if you want them to stick around.

OFFICE ATMOSPHEREThis one is self-explanatory: let the content executive get on with it — and accept that they aren’t likely to have the time to participate in every teleconference or team building event and exercise. If they absolutely must join each of those activities, ensure they have external resources on call to produce the work while they are pulled away from their desks.

That’s it for now – I’ll leave you with the Content Marketing Institute’s guide to building a content team, which includes far more tips than those outlined above. Happy CNY to all, and best of luck building your content teams in 2019 and beyond.

If you’re anything like n/n’s editorial team, by the end of the calendar or lunar year you will have had a mental list of the most well-used thought leadership topics in your field. For core B2B sectors like financial and professional services, this list might include AI, cyber-security, sustainability, and, inevitably, digital transformation (again).

With many firms in the region still firming up content calendars for the new year, the temptation is to stick to these safe fields, especially given the anxiety over geopolitical and macroeconomic risk. (Indeed, saying anything about China is proving a real challenge, now references to the macroeconomy, trade, or outbound investment are often deemed too controversial for many compliance teams to approve. This is arguably the first time in a generation that the underlying narrative to China’s macroeconomy hasn’t been that the country is getting richer, fast.)

Yet the trick to effective thought leadership is the second word of that somewhat overused phrase: leading the pack by coming up with something novel. It’s not “thought followership”. Of course, we know that coming up with entirely new umbrella topics is not always realistic. The fact that the year is porcine rather than canine has no bearing on what matters to our clients (or, more crucially, their clients), or on what it makes sound editorial and commercial sense to discuss.

What is required is a new take on an underexplored or emerging sub-issue that will pique readers’ interest. The greater focus in 2018 on AI, for instance, was an evolution of the overarching fintech theme that has been running for some years, gaining mainstream relevance as once-limited technologies found broader commercial application. (Consultancies like McKinsey, as might be expected, were ahead of the curve here: ideally the topics you highlight today you’d like everyone to be talking about tomorrow.)

With that in mind I canvassed our team to find some B2B angles that we thought were underexplored (at least in the Asia-Pacific context) and ripe to feature more in the Year of the Pig. Consider them n/n’s thought leadership thought starters, perhaps…

The ethics of AI: the dominant narrative last year was about how AI could help companies cut costs and deliver better service to their clients. The hot debate now is about its governance and ethical application – in everything from loan applications to help-request chatbots. Can we be sure that AI won’t incorporate the biases of its programmers, leading to problems down the road? Most B2B businesses that want to use AI (i.e. all of them) will also want to know how to protect themselves against making AI mistakes.

Cross border data ownership and governance: Banks in the UK and EU are opening up their data up to third parties, creating “ecosystems” of service providers; the same is happening (with regulatory encouragement rather than coercion) in plenty of Asia-Pacific markets. Not enough analysis has been done on what this means for cross-border businesses in one of the world’s most fragmented regions. How can firms be prepared to be responsible data managers (and what commercial impact will initiatives like Australia’s Consumer Data Right have if adopted more widely)?

A corollary of this is What will B2B tech ecosystems look like? Thanks to China’s digital behemoths you don’t need much imagination to see how consumer-focused tech platforms in the region can evolve. But what about the prospects for B2B ecosystems, involving fintech, insurtech and a whole raft of professional services? Sure, there are plenty of discrete innovations in the region, from trade and SME finance to new approaches to professional services, but who will bring them together? Speaking from painful experience, a one-stop shop for SME professional services would be a major boon…

How will an ageing workforce affect APAC’s B2B companies? To date most commentary on ageing (in APAC at least) has been by hand-wringing actuaries or wealth managers warning about insufficient pensions. But actually ageing will affect every sector, and B2B employers are in prime position to lead on the issue of how workforces can make best use of their experienced, knowledgeable and not-ready-to-retire experts. Who’s ready to make ageing a bigger diversity & inclusion issue?

Naturally the more you drill down into different B2B sectors the more ideas bubble to the surface, but in the interests of brevity I’ll leave it there for now. Here’s hoping we see some ambitious firms ready to lead thinking on these issues in the Year of the Pig. In the meantime, Kung Hei Fat Choi!

Not a week goes by
when some of the New Narrative content team isn’t writing about fintech. So we
know how tricky it can be to keep up with all the lingo and understand what new
terms mean. With that in mind we’ve put together a fintech jargon buster that
explains some of the ideas that are most discussed but often least well
understood — such as blockchain, opening banking and initial coin offerings — while
also examining some of the current discussions and developments around each
topic.

Sandbox

This may seem a
strange term to use about regulation, but it’s actually a helpful metaphor. A
child’s sandbox creates a defined, safe space to play in, while a fintech
sandbox provides allows companies to test out new technology and services under
a controlled but more relaxed regulatory environment. Regulators have been keen
to set up fintech sandboxes to promote innovation in financial services while also
giving innovators the chance to figure out any regulatory issues that might
arise. It’s also a way for regulators to ensure that they keep-up-to-date with the
technological changes which are likely to affect future rules.

For firms, the
advantage is usually that they get a chance to test their services using real
market data and information, while being in dialogue with the regulator. It
should mean their service is quicker to market and has a better chance of
success. In Asia-Pacific, countries with a fintech sandbox include Australia,
Japan, Hong
Kong Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore.

Open banking describes
the process by which banks share data with third parties with the aim of
improving the financial services and products available to customers. In many
countries, such as Australia, Hong Kong and UK, banking services are dominated
by a few major institutions which can limit choice and competition. The idea is
that open banking solves this problem by getting banks to share their data with
non-banks, which are then in a stronger position to launch new products.

Many banks are
embracing open banking and creating platforms for third-party developers to
offer new innovations to their existing customer base. In that way a bank can
be seen to be offering the best range of products and services while also
retaining the customer relationship. For customers — business and retail — some
of the oft-discussed benefits include having a single application that contains
information from multiple bank accounts in one place, easier switching between
bank providers, and quicker payment methods.

The sharing of data is usually achieved through an application programme interface (API), essentially a way for two systems to communicate with each other and share data. In some publications the term API is used interchangeably with open banking, even though this is not strictly correct. APIs are also not a new technology — well-known examples include Google giving access to its Maps data to use in the Uber app, or a flight search website communicating with airline websites to provide a list of flight options — but the term has come to greater public prominence with the push towards open banking.

Robo-advisors

This has been one of
the most discussed themes in wealth management over the last few years. While
the name conjures images of androids telling people which funds to buy, it is
probably more accurate to speak of greater automation of wealth advisory
services. In most cases this means using algorithms and artificial intelligence
to guide clients to the best investments through a series of questions and
options (a process that also in theory makes it easier to work backwards from
desired outcome to optimal investment strategy). For now, it is rare for
robo-advisors not to be used in conjunction with some level of human input.

The advantages for
both the wealth manager and the client are that robo-advisors are more
cost-effective than humans alone, and can often provide better outcomes as they
are capable of crunching more data. But like any automation technology, it is
only as good as the information that supports it, and the algorithms that
provide potential solutions.

Robo-advisors are more cost effective

Blockchain

It can be easy to
get terms Blockchain and distributed ledger technology (DLT) confused as they
are often used interchangeably. Blockchain is the most well-known example of a
type of DLT. Part of the reason it is so high profile is because it is the
technology behind Bitcoin.

Blockchain works by
allowing users to enter information — a stock trade for example — into
encrypted electronic blocks known as ledgers, with everybody in the chain
receiving updated information at the same time, which speeds up transaction
processing. This means there is no central database or record, and once
information is entered it is immutable. This is why is it often viewed as a way
to reduce fraud and prevent cyberattacks in financial transactions — you will
often hear people talk about ‘a single source of truth’.

In financial
services, most of the focus has been on so-called private or
enterprise blockchains. These are blockchains that are only open to
participants that are invited to be part of the platform. The underlying
technology remains the same but they tend to be limited to regulated
institutions and be more structured than public blockchains.

Initial Coin Offerings (ICO)

ICOs are a way for companies to raise funds for projects. They are often likened to initial public offerings (IPOs) and while they do have some similarities, there are some key differences including the fact that ICOs are not issued on a regulated exchange and do not have the same investor protections. ICOs can also be sold directly to investors without the requirement to go through a licenced intermediary.

So how does an ICO
work? A company that wants to launch a new product or service will publish a
whitepaper that explains the project and how it plans to use the funds from the
ICO. The company will then issue and sell a set amount of crypto-tokens to
investors, much like the shares a company issues during an IPO. The capital
raised is used to fund the new product or service, and investors look to make
returns from the rise in the value of the token. Like shares, the value of
tokens can fall as well as rise.

In most countries,
ICOs operate in a regulatory grey area. The sharp growth in ICOs (see chart),
means regulators are taking a closer look at the instrument. Some countries,
including South
Korea and China, have banned
ICOs, and the sector is likely to face
stricter oversight in major markets in the future. The
crypto-industry is also trying to meet the challenge presented by greater
regulatory oversight by evolving the product. One potential answer is Security
Token Offerings (see below).

Security Token
Offerings are a response from the crypto-industry to the need for a better
regulated method of fundraising. Unlike ICOs, STOS are classified as securities
(at least by the US Securities and Exchange Commission; China
has already banned the instrument) and so must adhere to securities
regulations. This means they offer more investor protection but correspondingly
are more expensive for companies wishing to issue them.

As well as being
regulated, STOs can be and are often backed by a tangible asset such as bonds,
stocks or property. By ‘tokenizing’ these assets, they can be traded using
distributed ledger technology (see blockchain section above).

If you are an experienced writer and an ambitious self-starter looking to use your skills in the exciting space emerging between media and marketing, we would like to meet you.

New Narrative, Asia’s leading content consultancy, offers unmatched opportunities for advancement and a chance to shape the future direction of a young business at the forefront of a rapidly expanding regional media and content marketing industry.

You will be part of a diverse and global team of professionals with decades of combined experience in journalism, digital media and publishing, creating agenda-setting content campaigns for the world’s biggest companies across a range of sectors.

Also on offer: a highly competitive base salary, commensurate with experience, benefits such as a company medical plan and paid holidays, and a flexible and progressive work environment that puts a premium on work-life balance.

With 2018 already practically in the rear-view mirror (just where did it go, anyway?), thoughts inevitably turn to plans for the New Year – or will turn, once the equally inevitable gluttony and good cheer of the holiday period have been dispensed with. It’s a time when financial targets and strategic priorities are set for the months ahead. Many marketing teams will be going through a similar process with their publishing and content goals for 2019.

At a lot of organisations, these plans will take the form of a content calendar. Whether cradled in a visually dazzling PowerPoint or slapped up in a spreadsheet, this will lovingly detail all the amazing things the company plans to publish over the next twelve months. In the first few editorial meetings of the new year relevant teams will rally around the document with a deep sense of shared purpose, working around the clock to bring that next video interview or op-ed to life.

And then, something happens. Or to put it more accurately, nothing happens. The editorial meetings slow down. Maybe one or two tasks listed on the calendar are skipped or put off when people are busy dealing with other things, or priorities change and the business wants … something else. Soon enough, the calendar is banished to the dark corners of a desk or Intranet and the team is back to scrambling to produce things on an ad-hoc basis.

Given the amount of time and effort that can be put into these documents, the untimely demise of a content calendar is a real shame. From what we’ve seen, it’s also often the result of a few common mistakes. Following are a few tips to help your editorial calendar stay alive (and relevant) well into the new year.

*Be realistic. The misstep we see most often is the tendency to get overly ambitious in the planning stages. Setting out ideas for a bunch of polished videos with no clear idea where you’re going to get the production resources, or assigning a series of opinion pieces to a stressed-out senior executive who’s constantly on the road, sets a calendar up for failure by making execution next to impossible and calling the entire exercise into question.

*Get the experts involved. Publishing meaningful work is often highly dependent on the insight of in-house experts – yet marketing teams often cook up content plans on their own and present them to the rest of the business as a done deal. Make sure the people whose views you’ll need to draw on are deeply involved in the calendar’s development; this will not only help define key ideas and themes, but also help get their goodwill and buy-in for the entire process. They’ll also often be the first to tell you if that plan to have them crank out a LinkedIn post a week might be too demanding (see “Be realistic” above).

*Be versatile … to a point. Established wisdom rightly dictates that content calendars should include a mix of themes and formats (articles, graphics, videos, podcasts), to serve various audiences and purposes. But this is another area where planning can easily get carried away. Not every enterprise needs to do it all; a certain amount of consistency in topics and formats builds focus, makes it easier to keep going, and helps teach your audience what to expect. As we’ve said before, don’t be afraid to repeat yourself or repurpose material now and then. Constantly creating new intellectual property from scratch is a time-consuming and exhausting business (which is exactly why a lot of organisations seek our help).

*Be flexible. While it’s good to stick to a blueprint whenever possible, be ready and willing to embrace a certain amount of change based on market or industry developments, and business needs. A commentary that speaks to a recent news event will almost certainly find a wider and more receptive audience than whatever you planned six months ago. It’s also important to look how what you’re publishing is being received and to apply what you learn to future plans on the calendar – even if it calls those plans into question.

With that, the team here at n/n wishes everyone the best for the planning/holiday season, and the new year. May all your publishing dreams be happy ones.

The scene? A Japanese restaurant. Location? The Dubai International Financial Centre.

This was the tail end of 2014. Pre-Trump; in the early years of Xi Jinping’s reign. n/n was just over a year old. There I sat across from a senior marketer representing a global asset manager. His employer was investing in a Middle East expansion, he said, and they wanted to publish insightful commentary to strengthen their brand across the region.

While we scanned the menu, he explained the myriad ways capital markets across the Gulf were changing as they attempted to become more attractive to international investors.

I nodded and launched into consultant mode. There was the issue of regulation, not to mention the nuances that distinguish each Gulf market, from the UAE to Qatar to Kuwait. There was the tussle between Islamic finance and global finance. His firm could get ahead of each development with a distinct voice and potentially ‘own’ the story. White papers, infographics, videos, conferences, op-eds – the works.

He put up his hand. “Let’s first see how the market perceives these reforms,” he said.

On the face of it, this approach made sense. Best to let events evolve and then find one’s unique niche inside of the story. But it soon became apparent that what he really meant was something very different: his employer wanted to follow – rather than lead – the conversation.

In other words: We will let others stick their necks out and comment first. Then we’ll decide what to publish so we don’t offend anyone.

A Common Refrain

This story isn’t unique. At n/n, we frequently hear companies say in the same breath, (1) they want to publish cutting edge thought leadership, and (2) they also want to ensure that anything offensive or controversial is deleted before publication.

These contradictory motivations are especially strong in markets such as China and in the Gulf States, where falling afoul of regulators and policymakers – or uttering views deemed politically distasteful – can carry consequences.

To be sure, in the real-world companies have to weigh interests, just like individuals. They must balance their interest in publishing insightful commentary with a whole host of other considerations – compliance and legal constraints chief among them.

Think of it this way: when your friend asks if you prefer his new hairstyle to his old one (and you really don’t), common decency kicks in and to spare his feelings you are likely to pretend that you do, or at least find some other creative way to dance around the issue. Most of us readily accept that this particular truth simply isn’t worth the cost of delivering it.

Companies employ a similar calculus to self-censor all of the time, but on much more important matters. And therein lies the problem: All truths aren’t equal.

For an example, the Hong Kong office of a global bank may conclude that pointing out the flaws in China’s domestic credit rating system isn’t worth the risk of being seen as ‘anti-China.’

But the reality is the cost of ignoring – or at least failing to address – such an important matter is higher over the long term: investors and other stakeholders will wake up to the fact that such a bank is in the business of publishing hot air and bumf, not insightful commentary. In other words, the market may eventually turn on such companies for keeping their mouths shut.

An Excess of Caution

All of which means when it comes to thought leadership campaigns, companies – especially large, bureaucratic ones – are frequently their own worst enemies. Many not only preemptively self-censor – they also overdo it. What usually happens is this:

The marketing team has a bold idea – say, a compelling series on the real risks of investing in a cross-border infrastructure project linked to China’s Belt & Road Initiative. Work starts off with a bang: they compile lists of failed deals; they identify and attempt to interview frustrated investors.

But then, a rotating carousel of internal stakeholders gets its hands on the campaign.

First, the business heads cut out any material that could be ‘perceived as negative’ to protect the firm’s positive image with clients.

Second, the compliance team cuts out anything that could be ‘perceived as legally problematic’ to mitigate legal risks.

And then, finally, the marketing team looks at the content again – and, in an attempt to prove that they aren’t taking any chances – make another round of ‘just-to-play-it-safe’ cuts.

The result?

What was once a compelling, nuanced and insightful research paper is now a bland commentary that serves no specific audience or particular purpose. It’s as if the Hollywood machine picked up an edgy and utterly original screenplay only to dumb it down into a mediocre we’ve-seen-this-movie-a-dozen-times sequel.

What Can We Do?

With this in mind, how can you avoid ‘death by a thousand cuts’ with your 2019 content campaigns?

Here are a few tips:

Before embarking on a campaign, devise a coherent content strategy and put it all down on paper. The key is to be as specific as possible: This is exactly what we want to say, and importantly, why we want to say it.

Once the strategy is devised, obtain full buy-in from internal stakeholders, from business heads to compliance, before work begins: Make it clear that watered down content results are nothing but wasted effort and expenditure.

Accept that some external audiences will almost certainly disagree with your views: Take that as a compliment and cough it up to the price of being a genuine thought leader. Strong opinions should elicit strong responses.

And finally, if you are too constrained to say anything compelling and insightful, don’t say anything at all: It’s simply a waste of money to fake thought leadership.

At the end of the day, if you refuse to take a risk and say something meaningful, one of your competitors will. And they will walk away with not only the thought leadership crown, but eventually, the other things that go with it: More trust from clients, a stronger voice in the market, and inevitably, more market share.

The good news is there’s plenty to comment on. Trade tensions are escalating. US treasury yields are rising. China continues its ascent while navigating painful contradictions. A populist has emerged victorious in Brazil…

We are delighted to announce two new additions to our fast-growing team over the past few weeks.

Kale Law has joined New Narrative as Business Development Executive. Previously Kale was at Thomson Reuters, where he led the growth of the Eikon messenger community in Hong Kong, enabling portfolio managers and traders to connect and trade with financial professionals around the globe.

Prior to that, Kale worked with the Economist Group, where he supported the business development efforts of the group’s integrated solutions team in Hong Kong; and Asian Private Banker, where he expanded the publication’s events and advertising business among private banks and asset management firms.

In his new role at New Narrative, Kale will contribute to business development initiatives across our growing client base of global banks, asset managers, and professional services, healthcare and technology firms. Kale holds a BA in History from the University of Toronto.

Separately, we’re pleased to welcome Jourdan Ma, who has joined New Narrative as a Content Executive. Jourdan will play a key role in the development of content for our diverse roster of clients across a range of formats, from infographic concepts to social media and event coverage. She will also support the in-depth research that informs many of our consulting engagements and content campaigns.

Jourdan, who holds a degree in English from the Education University of Hong Kong and a master’s degree in international journalism from Hong Kong Baptist University, joins New Narrative from Hong Kong daily The Standard, where she was a features reporter.